Sore Losers (Radical Left Has Yet To Get Over The Unparalled Success of Reagan's Presidency)

National Review ^ | 6/7/04 | Daniel J. Flynn

[KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle]

This weekend, while antiwar activists outside the White House denounced the "terrorists," "war criminals," and "torturers" in the Bush administration, attention quickly shifted to one of George W. Bush's predecessors. But if the current president inspires unhinged anger, news of president Reagan's fading health put many protesters in a more celebratory mood.

"Good riddance to Reagan," remarked Virginian Jared Hermann. "He deserves what he gets and more. He should be tried for war crimes." A friend concurred. "You just wish the worst on him that you can possibly wish," admitted Ian Roberts. "I don't want to wish death on anyone, but it seems with Reagan you really want to...." Reagan's poor health, he opined, was "karma."

As a nation mourns President Reagan's passing, many on the hardcore left cheer.

"We need to clap when he dies," declared protester David Barrows, who stood in front of the White House wearing a George W. Bush mask and giving Hitler salutes. Barrows said Reagan should be remembered "as the villain he really was. He was responsible for the deaths of students at Berkeley. He was responsible for deaths in Grenada — the trumped-up silly revolution to prove how big a man he was. He was responsible for the torture of a lot of people in Central America. He should be despised. Sorry, I do not forgive people who cheat the innocent out of their lives and kill peasants."

"I'd almost be willing to say I hope he doesn't die too soon because that just means more things are going to be named after him," said a D.C.-area high-school student; another teenage boy labeled the 40th president a "fascist." For a woman who traveled to the protest from New York, Reagan was a "reactionary," "the arch-enemy of the poor people of the world and of the people of the United States," and the man who ushered in "the beginning of the end for some civil rights that people held in this country."

"My general practice is to speak only well of the dead or not at all," noted Leonard Sanford of Waldorf, Maryland. "However, Mr. Reagan and his clique caused a lot of evil to this country and started this country on the wrong path. They did it with malice. They maliciously hurt a lot of people. It won't be with sorrow that I grieve his passing."

Some were more moderate in their sentiment. "I didn't like his policies at all," said World War II veteran Joseph Murphy, "but there was a gentleman I couldn't help but like." Cinda McGwynn of North Carolina reacted to news of Reagan's fading health saying, "That's too bad." "He was an old idiot and a lousy president, but I'm sorry he's sick and everything."

Expressions of compassion, however, were heavily outnumbered by venomous words.

"He's a fascist, of course," New Yorker William H. Depperman said of Reagan. "He is a slime; basically, a horrible, horrible person. People didn't like him. They despised him."

No, they actually loved him. And perhaps that is the key to understanding why even on his death bed Reagan evoked such hate from these extremists. President Reagan's policies not only proved wildly popular, but they proved the Left wrong.

Reagan defeated the Evil Empire while academics told us to resign ourselves to peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union. Campaign rhetoric depicted candidate Reagan as a trigger-happy warmonger, but President Reagan expanded the defense budget and became the greatest peacemaker of our time. The Left derided Reagan's tax cuts as "trickle-down economics," but by slashing top rates from 70 to 28 percent, Reagan helped unleash 92 months of economic growth, create 18 million new jobs, and enlarge the gross national product by a third. After a decade of Watergate, Communist expansion, gas lines, defeat in Vietnam, the Iranian hostage crisis, and economic malaise, many liberals argued in the late 1970s that America should accept our new, debased position. Reagan rebelled and restored a nation's pride.

At nearly every turn, Reagan succeeded where the Left said he would fail. Sore losers have yet to get over it.

[expatpat]

Not surprising that they are full of hate. To see your plans working beautifully through the Nixon resignation and the Carter presidency, only to then have one man blast your plans and gains to smithereens, must be galling.

[Ronaldus Magnus Reagan]

Exactly, and IIRC (and thats a big if) tax revenues boomed. Boomed for years as I recall. So, in the midst of unprecedented revenues how is it that we grew the debt. Could it be that Congress screwed Reagan on the Spending cuts? Yes-that is what I remember.

Yes, you are right. Here is a link to the yearly federal receipts.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/TaxFacts/TFDB/TFTemplate.cfm?Docid=200

Look at the decade of the 1980's and compare receipts and the outlays (right next to it). Amazing numbers, huh? BTW, this is the first post on FR that I've made since learning about the death of Ronald Reagan. I'm very sad as you can tell when you read my name that I use on FR.

[genghis]

One further accomplishment of our 40th- Shutting Quaddafy up. Boy, we didn't hear a peep out of that former lunatic after a few bombs went off in his back yard.
Don't forget the french wouldn't let us use their air space,in a futile attempt to protect him.

[goldstategop]

The Left has been take over by its fringe element - the kooks, weirdoes and wackos. These people are anti-military, anti-capitalist, and anti-American. They are repellent to the majority of the people of this country. And as long as the Democrats make a home for these types in their party, they will be doomed to minority status. I still consider myself an oldline liberal Democrat. In the eyes of the people running the Democratic Party today, that makes me and millions of fellow Americans a radical conservative. So be it. Like Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston can testify, its not us so much that left the Democrats as the Democrats left us by turning against all that is best about America.

[JLAGRAYFOX]

When Jimmy Carter and Bill Cinton pass away, let us see how many Americans flock to pay the last respect to them. I suspect not many! You live as a low life, you are honored as a low life!

[JayNorth]

Could it be that Congress screwed Reagan on the Spending cuts? Yes-that is what I remember.

They NEVER once mention any of that on the lame-stream media. I lived through that era. I remember the Democrat-controlled congress gleefully pronouncing Reagan's budget "Dead on Arrival" every year. Total tax revenues went UP during the Reagan administration. Unfortunately spending by the Democrat-controlled Congress went up even more. That's the truth of the matter. And you'll never hear even a mention of it anywhere but a conservative magazine or site.

If I hear one more "Reaganomics created record deficits" comment when these media outlets summarize his life I'm going to scream.

[100%FEDUP]

I remember how horrified the media was after Reagan made the, "...we begin bombing in 5 minutes..." statement on the radio. At that time all we heard was how powerful the Soviet Union was and what they were capable of doing to the USA if we made them mad. Reagan called their bluff, brought down the wall, ended the cold war and took the left's most power tool (fear of a nuclear war) away from them. I think they hate him for that more than anything else.

[ServesURight]

When Jimmy Carter and Bill Cinton pass away

Well Carter at least deserve some respect, with his military service and all.

Clinton they can dump him in the Atlantic for all I care.

[Terabitten]

"and kill peasants"

Is it just me, or is the left the only ones who ever refer to people as "peasants?"

[hinckley buzzard]

Notice, there was not one substantive reason identified for justifying the hate. Mere infantile, global, shapeless rage.

The grim fact is, the Left are people who hate first, then find targets on which to project their hate. Typically, as with all pathological narcissism, the hatred of the Left finds a focus on any object which punctures its grandiose fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience, threatens its view of itself as special and virtuous.

[crude77]

Thanks for the info. I have some cousins that I am looking forward to sharing this with.

My screen name gives no clue, but I wrote a paper in 1975 (sophmore year in highschool) on Ronald Reagan. I was extremly impressed by what I learned and have never changed my opinion of President Reagan.

[crude77]

If I hear one more "Reaganomics created record deficits" comment when these media outlets summarize his life I'm going to scream.

Man I hear ya. I don't mind if someones got an argument, but quit making stuff up. It drives me nuts.

[I still care]

I can't resist it....

ARTHUR: How do you do, good lady. I am Arthur, King of the Britons. Who's castle is that?
WOMAN: King of the who?
ARTHUR: The Britons.
WOMAN: Who are the Britons?
ARTHUR: Well, we all are. we're all Britons and I am your king.
WOMAN: I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an
autonomous collective.
DENNIS: You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship.
A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--
WOMAN: Oh there you go, bringing class into it again.
DENNIS: That's what it's all about if only people would--
ARTHUR: Please, please good people. I am in haste. Who lives
in that castle?
WOMAN: No one live there.
ARTHUR: Then who is your lord?
WOMAN: We don't have a lord.
ARTHUR: What?
DENNIS: I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We
take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the
week.
ARTHUR: Yes.
DENNIS: But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified
at a special biweekly meeting.
ARTHUR: Yes, I see.
DENNIS: By a simple majority in the case of purely internal
affairs,--
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: --but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more--
ARTHUR: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
WOMAN: Order, eh -- who does he think he is?
ARTHUR: I am your king!
WOMAN: Well, I didn't vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don't vote for kings.
WOMAN: Well, 'ow did you become king then?
ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake, [angels sing] her arm clad in the
purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of
the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to
carry Excalibur. [singing stops] That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing
swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive
power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some
farcical aquatic ceremony.
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: Well you can't expect to wield supreme executive power
just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: I mean, if I went around sayin' I was an empereror just
because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd
put me away!
ARTHUR: Shut up! Will you shut up!
DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
HELP! HELP! I'm being repressed!
ARTHUR: Bloody peasant!
DENNIS: Oh, what a give away. Did you here that, did you here
that, eh? That's what I'm on about -- did you see him repressing
me, you saw it didn't you?

[NZerFromHK]

Believe it or not, I have met a Christian online which spewed out this type of extreme hatred on Reagan (as well as George W. Bush) long before he reappears on the US or world attention (I think it was April 2001?) on the now defunct Christian fiction series Left Behind's official website's discussion board. I believe he was relatively conservative on all Christian and moral issues (there is no way he's apostate in the John Spong style), but on politics he speaks just a lot like Noam Chomsky or worse.

I remember he called for Reagan to be either court-martialed, put on US court for trial, or even to the ICC/ICJ at the Hague and be trialled for Grenada invasion, Iran civil aircraft shootdown, Libya bombing,...you catch the drift.

As far as I know, that gentleman maintains his own discussion board after being kicked out by several Christian boards. You can visit his site here, and what I saw at their Reagan thread is surprisingly respectful if gruding:

http://www.christian-messageboard.com/forum/index.php?act=idx